MADISON, Wis. – A federal court in Milwaukee issued another scathing order on Thursday against Republican lawmakers, forcing them to make public emails and other documents they wanted to keep secret related to the redrawing of political boundaries.

The panel of three judges said Republican lawmakers made a “poorly disguised” attempt to “cloak the private machinations of Wisconsin’s Republican legislators in the shroud of attorney-client privilege.”

The judges called it a “shameful attempt to hide the redistricting process from public scrutiny.”

The order from the eastern district federal court comes before a trial in the case is set to begin Tuesday. The lawsuit filed by a group of Democrats alleges the maps are unconstitutional because of how minorities are treated and because so many people are moved from one district to another.

The new GOP-friendly maps were drawn and approved last year by Republicans who control the Legislature. States are required to redraw legislative and congressional district boundaries every 10 years to reflect population changes as reported by the U.S. Census.

Thursday’s order is in line with three previous orders that found the documents produced by the Legislature are not protected by attorney-client privilege. The judges said that the 84 documents, primarily emails, involve advice on political, not legal, strategy and therefore are not protected.

Most of the newly released messages are between GOP-hired attorneys and legislative staff working on the maps. Much of the discussion involves support of certain Hispanic community groups for the maps and discussing legislative debate.

One email from GOP attorney Jim Troupis trumpets the fact that at one point the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund was supportive of the map and was sending a representative to testify in support of it at a legislative hearing.

“We will certainly want him to testify as this will take the largest legal fund for the Latino community off the table in any later court battle,” Troupis wrote to other attorneys working on the case and staff members of Republican legislative leaders.

Troupis did not immediately return a message seeking comment.

Another email from Troupis reported that Rick Esenberg, president of conservative public interest law firm the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, had agreed to testify before the Legislature in support of the maps. Troupis said in the email that before he testified Esenberg needed “a.) the maps; b.) the numbers.”

Esenberg said Thursday that his testimony was about the susceptibility of the maps to successful legal challenge, not their merits.

“There’s a bit of misnomer in what Jim wrote,” Esenberg said. “My testimony was about whether the plan could be legally challenged.”

Previous disclosures in the lawsuit revealed that nearly all of the state’s Republican lawmakers signed a legal agreement in which they promised to not comment publicly about redistricting discussions while the maps were being drafted.

Another document of talking points prepared by legislative staff for state Rep. Robin Vos, the powerful co-chairman of the budget-writing committee, warned him to ignore public comments about the maps and focus instead on what was being said in private strategy meetings.

Democratic Assembly members criticized Republicans for the latest development during floor debate Thursday that began just minutes after the latest documents were released. Democrats were pushing a series of ethics reforms including making the Legislature subject to the open meetings law.

Democrats do not have the power to pass the proposals through the Republican-controlled Legislature.

The last three times redistricting was taken up in Wisconsin, due to split political control, the Legislature and governor were unable to agree upon a plan. Each of those times, in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, a federal court had to intervene and approve a map for state legislative districts.

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